


Lock, Key, Keeper

by Glinda



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Loyalty, Magic, Magical Artifacts, Male-Female Friendship, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-09-20 12:12:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9490490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/pseuds/Glinda
Summary: Molly keeps The Folly's secrets just as surely as Nightingale does.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt - _Where'd you put the keys girl?_ which is from Cornflake Girl by Tori Amos.
> 
> I haven't read _The Hanging Tree_ yet so no spoilers for that. Or for anything after _Broken Homes_ really. It's set pre-canon so its more ideas from the books rather than actual plot elements spoilers.

There are things in The Folly that are kept under lock and key for a good reason. Things that would be destroyed if they could be. Things from which nothing good can be learned. Some of those things came back from the War; some of them were there before it. When the dregs of the Wizards come back from the War, they mostly do not stay long. Even the Nightingale only stays long enough to lock up some things before he leaves again. But before he does, he seeks Molly out, and presents her with a key. The depravations of the war have expedited her rise through the ranks of the staff, to under Housekeeper and a large bundle of keys sit at her hip as the mark of her rank. She adds the new key to her bundle; even through the protection of her neat cotton gloves she can feel the burn of the cold iron. Many of the wizards have given her keys on their departure, bedroom and office keys they will no longer need. This key, she can tell, is different. 

“Keep that safe for me,” he says, words innocuous but eyes terribly serious, “I’ll be back for it, but in case I don’t…” 

He hesitates for a moment, closing his eyes tightly before opening them again and his haunted eyes are explanation enough. 

She nods and mimes something disappearing in a puff of smoke. 

“Thank you, Molly.” 

She didn’t even know he knew her name.

~

The Nightingale is gone for longer than expected. 

Molly listens carefully to the gossip of the remaining wizards and below stairs staff both. She collects keys and fragments of information with equal fastidiousness. She moves quietly enough that she hears all kinds of things she isn’t meant to, war stories and scurrilous rumours both, gathering them together to piece together a picture of this man who has entrusted her with a key of great importance. 

It’s nearly six months since he left when they come to find her. There’s a great deal of commotion, politicians and civil servants who aren’t actually part of The Folly – or at least had attended Casterbrook themselves – rarely cross the threshold themselves, and they certainly don’t venture below stairs. So she has a few minutes in the ensuing chaos to compose herself and make a decision before she has to answer the summons to meet them in the Atrium.

She thinks about what she’s heard about The Nightingale, about what he’s capable of doing in battle. She also thinks about what she’s actually seen of him, unfailingly polite, surprisingly kind – remembering years before, taking the time to carefully clean the wound on her arm where she’d been caught in the cross-fire of someone else’s prank – and those haunted eyes. Molly knows all too well what wizards are capable of doing to people they don’t consider people. She makes her decision.

They start their questioning politely enough, though thankfully one of the other skeleton staff of servants explains that she can’t speak, that’s she’s not being disobedient, she never says a word. She feigns ignorance of which key they are after, instead leading them upstairs to the office that was kept aside for Foreign Office wizards and unerringly locating the key for that room. Letting them make the implication that she thought it was his key for this office that he’d given her. Eventually, Molly hands over her ring of keys with obvious reluctance, making it obvious the irregularity of the request. They disappear off somewhere else with them, glancing back at her suspiciously. She isn’t entirely lying, she doesn’t know which room the key was for, but she does have her suspicions, has put together what she’s learned about him to figure out the sort of thing he might have brought back from the war and want kept under lock and key. She is utterly certain that these avarice men with their false smiles and mocking glances should not get anywhere near it. 

Near anything that is kept behind a lock that magic cannot open. 

They come back empty handed, and they aren’t so polite now. One of them grabs her by the shoulders and pins her against the wall. “I will ask you this just once more, girl. Where did you put the key that Nightingale gave you?” He growls.

There’s barely a veneer of civility over his rage, but Molly isn’t remotely afraid of him. His touch barely hurts her, though she’ll probably have a few bruises tomorrow, she’s had worse from schoolboys. Molly is many things, but she is not a girl, not in any sense that this man means it. She smiles up at him, not her polite ‘don’t scare the horses’ smile, but her real smile, the one that shows all her teeth. 

She relishes the fear that blooms in his eyes at the sight, even the rage and the disgust that follows is welcome because she knows exactly how to handle that. 

In the end they drag her back up to the Atrium, to the main doors and try to take her with them. They can’t. The wards, bounce her straight back inside again. And once their ringleader is outside, he finds the wards strangely difficult to get back through. 

(Molly remembers, being very small and standing at the coach-house door, pushing futilely against the wards, watching the snow falling and longing to go play in it with the other junior members of staff. An older wizard, crouching down to speak to her, to explain that it’s for her own safety. That he cannot undo what was done to her, can only make this small redress and keep her from further harm. She doesn’t remember what was done to her, but she does remember that he was the one to name her Molly.)

They weren’t being subtle. There are lots of witnesses and gossip travels fast among the servants and the wizards themselves. Without context Molly knows how it looks, he attacked her, tried to throw her out of the building and then The Folly itself shut him out. That will do its own damage, without her needing to say a word. 

They don’t come back.

~

Nightingale comes back. 

He looks sad and tired, but a little triumphant. He knows they didn’t get what they came for. He doesn’t even need to ask for her; she appears silently before he even has his coat off. He presents her with her own keys – and not a few extras that they had clearly scrounged up in their search of the building - and she returns them to their proper place with not a little relief. 

“How did you manage it? Where did you put it that they couldn’t find it?” He asks her. Clearly aware that all their tracking spells had only led them back to her. 

It’s late, and all the other servants and wizards have gone to bed, but she looks around carefully first to ensure they aren’t observed. Carefully she loosens her collar and carefully retrieves the fine chain that is hiding below it. She pulls it up quickly but steadily not bothering to hide her flinch when cold iron touches and burns her skin. She presents him with the key, watching the emotions chase across his face, understanding, grief, rage, sympathy and finally gratefulness. 

He takes the key and for a moment stares at it, before holding it up as though to measure the chain against her. Never breaking eye contact, he reaches out a rests his hand on her chest, exactly where the key had sat. He says something in Latin, and she feels the pain of the burn – which she has grown so used to – ease. Magic cannot heal the injury, but it can draw the pain a little and the gesture as much as the magic cements her certainty that her decision was correct. 

“Will you come with me?” Nightingale asks her, “there are things I would rather not tell you, but I think you have a right to know.”

She nods and follows him, to the door at the end of the corridor where no one bothers to go. He takes the key and unlocks the room and together they walk through a maze of silent nightmares. He makes explanations where he can, but mostly they move in silence. There are still things that ought to be destroyed, that are beyond his ability to do so, but not hers. So she helps him where she can and between them they make a not inconsiderable reduction to the nightmares. When they are done he locks the door behind them and offers her the key hesitantly. 

“I would entirely understand,” he says in a voice stilted and distant, “if what you have seen today, makes you wish to leave the service of The Folly. God knows, I would like to bury it all under 6ft of concrete and throw away the key, but I can’t do that. I cannot, however, in good conscience ask anyone else to remain here either unwillingly or under false pretences. I know there is some evidence that the wards do not allow you to actually leave the building, but if you wish to leave then I will find those with the appropriate knowledge and get the wards lifted to let you go.”

Molly was very young when she first came to The Folly, so young she can barely remember life before it. Mostly she remembers coldness and fear. The Folly is the only home she has ever known, she thinks of the way the light falls through the high windows at sunset and the nightmares in the storeroom, and knows certain and sure that she wants no other home. 

She will stay. At least for as long as The Nightingale does. No one else has ever trusted as much as he has in all of this; she will not repay his kindness by leaving him to shoulder this burden alone. 

She reaches out and takes the key from him, squeezing his hand before letting go to hang the key back on the ring hanging from her waist. 

“Thank you, Molly,” he says softly. 

She inclines her head, “you’re welcome, Thomas,” she thinks back at him silently. One day she might even say that out loud. Molly’s never had a friend before; anything is possible.


End file.
